


The Phoenix And the Turtle (A Metaphysical Romance)

by Vulgarweed



Series: Internal Rhyme series [3]
Category: Good Omens - Gaiman & Pratchett, RPF Historical - 16th Century
Genre: 16th Century, Elizabethan, Historical, Illustrated, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-31
Updated: 2010-03-31
Packaged: 2017-10-08 13:21:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 19,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/76061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vulgarweed/pseuds/Vulgarweed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's the 16th century, Golden Age of intra-Christian religious warfare, Hermetic magic[k], English literature, and codpiece jokes. In which Crowley has a bad secret, a good sulk, and an ill-advised scheme; Aziraphale has a mortal admirer who's getting too close (in a purely Neoplatonic way, of course); and the Need-to-Know Basis clause of the Arrangement is stretched to the breaking point. Illustrated by Quantum_Witch</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Supporting Players  
> JOHN DEE (A Polymath With More Specialties Than is Healthy for One Human)  
> GIORDANO BRUNO (A Philosopher. File Under: Heretics)  
> EDWARD KELLEY, A.K.A. TALBOT (A Conman By Choice; A Real Medium By Accident)  
> MADIMI[EL?] (A Spirit of Uncertain Provenance)  
> JANE DEE (A Long-Suffering Wife)  
> SIR PHILIP SIDNEY (A Knight, Poet, Occult Dabbler, and Messenger. A Bit of a Historical Redshirt.)  
> WILL SHAKESPEARE (A Playwright and Poet)  
> DEATH (Death)

  
**Prologue 1: Florence, Italy, 1542 AD**

The beautiful city was a tempter’s paradise in these days—at least for a tempter who still had a bit of passion remaining for his work. But one tempter in particular was bored out of his skull, leaning his head on his hand on the table and trying not to fall asleep as the circle of earnest young men around him carried on their vehement argument in hushed, nervous tones.

“But…Agrippa,” whispered one, “writes of the difference in conjurations; of course the black arts, invocations of demons and whatnot, but also there is the holy magic, the knowledge and conversation of angels…”

“Ah, that’s all Jewish word games and Moorish numbers,” muttered another. “The true power, now, that’s nothing to do with this Qabala, really, it’s in mastering of the elements, and those wicked spirits so feared by the sheep can be easily controlled by…” This one had the most irritating way of holding forth yet, a sort of supercilious superiority and a way of pretending everything he said was layered with veiled meanings, when in reality, he was saying less than he seemed to be.

Crowley, waking up a little next to him, pulled a scrap of parchment out of the lecturer’s ostentatious stack of it and held it up near the candle, careful that his hatbrim still shielded his eyes. “Hmmm, what’s this?” he said curiously, quite aloud to the entire table. “A sigil for the invocation and commanding of…ah, an _incubus_. As opposed to a succubus?”

The table erupted in nervous titters, but he could see real fear in at least a couple of pairs of eyes. And titillated curiosity. “That can get you burned _twice,_ Philosopher.”

Too bloody easy, he thought as he looked round at them, unsure why he was even there. He got up and walked away in slightly unbalanced disgust.

A good auto-da-fe won more souls for Hell in an hour than a decade of this kind of whispering and gossip and sophistry plus all the Medicis put together and competition-level-speed-scheming. And he’d had nothing at all to do with that, nor wanted to – one Dominican could do the work of ten demons, and Downstairs didn’t even realise how badly they were being outclassed. There was no art to it anymore, just brutality and paperwork and politics.

Crowley thought he needed a vacation from his vacation, but that unearned commendation business over the Spanish Inquisition was starting to wear thin, and he figured that just hanging around this crowd long enough was bound to lead to some contact success.

He was still in Italy when it started there too. He’d dawdled too long, but the food was good.

  
**Prologue 2: Trinity College, Cambridge, England, 1546 AD**

So it was true, those whispers at that print shop in Antwerp. Aziraphale had rather thought the last thing the most reckless of the Tudors would concern himself with was his intellectual legacy. And just as it was said, in its warrens of shelves was what could be the beginning of the best collection of Greek mathematics and natural philosophy texts he’d ever seen in England. Not that it had much competition.

Someone here definitely had something on the ball. Over millennia, certain senses of Aziraphale’s had begun to manifest themselves in specifically human ways, and that sensation the poets spoke of--the hairs on the back of his neck tingling--was by now extremely familiar.

Aziraphale himself was the most supernatural thing in the library, as he usually was in any room on earth. But as he reached for what appeared to be a work long thought lost in the West on the influence of the Spheres upon earthly magnetism, he was pretty sure he was feeling the very small beginnings of the turn of a very large cog. It was easy to lose track of those if you kept being distracted by the big personalities and the obvious crises of the age—those eruptions and panics and fads and wars and rumours of wars among what were, when you thought about it, very short-lived creatures. But it was often the tiniest stirrings of something hard to pin down at the time that would prove more important over the long run.

The brittle paper came to his hand like a tame bird, and he identified it like a naturalist.

And as he identified it, he became aware of something else: that he was no longer alone.

There was nothing obviously uncanny about the man who smiled at him from the end of the row, except perhaps that he was in the robe of a Trinity fellow and seemed surprisingly young. But his eyes were uncommonly bright, and he had a way of peering into Aziraphale’s face as though he were looking for something he knew was there but couldn’t quite put his finger on. The angel felt some remorse for his wariness--there was no malice in the youth, only keen intelligence and utterly sleepless curiosity. Which could be reason enough, in its way.

“Ah, that’s a good choice,” the young scholar said. “But I prefer the Pythagoras. Leads to some wonderful possibilities.”

“Indeed,” Aziraphale sighed, looking back down at the book, hoping to keep the conversation simple. He really didn’t like being interrupted at reading, though he supposed it was the price one paid for delving in someone else’s library.

Instead of taking the hint, the young man—who was quite handsome in a rangy, distracted sort of way—leaned in closer. “Would the gentleman like to see a small wonder?” he asked conspiratorially as he rummaged about in his robes.

_Well, it doesn’t get more straightforward and honest than that,_ Aziraphale sighed to himself. He considered delivering a stern lecture on the value of discretion but decided even that was more involved than he wanted to get, and was about to offer a kind but firm demurral when the young man drew out his closed fist and then dramatically released his fingers.

A larger-than-normal dung beetle flew from his palm and circled Aziraphale’s head once, deosil, before landing on his shoulder. When he looked at it closely, he blinked hard to make certain he’d seen correctly. It was made of wood.

Now he really needed to give the lecture, though not quite the one he’d first thought. “You should not…you’re…” But the words froze in Aziraphale’s mouth, because the truly uncanny thing about the wooden scarab with its many moving parts was that as much as it looked exactly like some kind of conjurer’s golem, there really wasn’t a single bit of sorcery in it. None that Aziraphale could sense, anyway, and he was certain he was good at sniffing traces. “You shouldn’t show that to…just anyone...” he finally finished, a little lamely.

“I wouldn’t…to just anyone,” the young man smiled. “It’s only a model. I’m building a much larger one for the theater.”

“You know these are dangerous times. Even though, of course, it’s all natural law at work here, it could be misunderstood—I do know you aren’t…”

“Indeed not!” said the fellow triumphantly. “I knew a man of learning such as yourself would understand. Fine Greek engineering principles…and a bit of sleight of hand. I call it thaumaturgy, the art of wonders to elevate and inspire. A wondrous world our Creator has given us, and I would seek to increase knowledge of it, and therefore its due awe and appreciation.”

Aziraphale suspected very strongly that just because the young man hadn’t employed any sorcery in this particular very clever toy, it didn’t mean he wasn’t capable of it.

And after the angel had found an excuse to walk away, amid much promising of further conversation such as learned men have amid walls of books, he realised with a twinge he had not asked the lad’s name, and then with a second twinge that he suddenly knew it anyway. He’d found that only happened when it was a name he’d encounter again. Bit of a shame; he ought to rate more than two syllables, really.

  
**London, January 1559 AD**

For the most part it was over and done with, though the feast still went on, and the sky over the cathedral was deepening behind the steely grey clouds.

They’d celebrated with such enthusiasm, bless their hearts – it wasn’t all from the top down either. The hope was sincere; Aziraphale could feel it filling the streets and spilling up to the sky. And he knew that most of the people’s hopes were for things they didn’t want: no more hunger, no more fear, no more plague, no more of that horrible smell from the town squares. One could hardly blame them—where else should hope start?

Well, if you asked _her,_ you might get a different answer, or none at all, as she deemed prudent—for she was nothing if not that.

The happy chaos was all a little much—it gave him a bit of a hangover without the pleasure of having been drunk, and he’d retreated to the sharp slope of Westminster’s roof to observe it all from a distance where it wouldn’t befuddle him so much. The cold rain at least had stopped. But for the rock doves he was alone here, for the most part, with the sound of the wind—well, at least until the wind brought him another sound, the beating of much larger wings, and he sighed. He didn’t even have to turn around, although the perfume was something new. He’d been in Italy. It figured.

“What kind of _jackass,”_ said a familiar voice, quiet and laughing, “sets the date for a gigantic coronation in January?”

“Her astrologer, I believe,” Aziraphale said stiffly. It wasn’t that he approved; he most certainly did not. He was simply trying not to think of a wooden dung beetle.

Crowley snickered. “Good job.”

“Why are you always so—“

“Cynical, yes, I know. But she’ll be fine, I think. I mean, she could hardly do worse.”

“Be careful when you say that,” Aziraphale said wearily.

“Aziraphale—“

There was something in Crowley’s voice, or something out of the corner of his eye, that made Aziraphale turn around and look, really look at his counterpart for the first time in forty years. The velvet cap with its long jaunty red and gold feather. His handsome face, dark and smiling in the twilight, his ostentatious fur-lined cloak (which had had no lining until the demon had entered British airspace and re-encountered that familiar bone-chilling damp) and wine-red brocade doublet and snug hose outlining his legs and—dear God. Aziraphale immediately looked right back up at the sky, blushing.

“Tired of looking at me so quickly?”

The angel gave a weighted, put-upon sigh. “Is that the tackiest codpiece I’ve ever seen, or are you just glad to see me?”

“Both,” Crowley chuckled. “Frankly, it’s edgy for Italy but tame for Spain.”

“I suppose prevailing upon you for modesty is a lost cause.”

“It’s quite modest,” Crowley said. “No one can tell when I’m having an inappropriate response. Or an appropriate one. Besides, it distracts attention from my eyes.”

“I’m sure it must,” said Aziraphale, still looking at the sky. “Even I can’t look at your face right now.” The moon peered through a silvery crack in the clouds, though wet snow flurries were beginning to blow about. Aziraphale was waiting for the usual biting critique of his own outdated robes, but it never came. Crowley had fallen companionably silent.

But finally, as the snow picked up, he said, “You know, I’ve got some Italian wine. And even such, er, wingéd sprites as ourselves probably oughtn’t drink it on a roof so steep. Besides, it’s a church and it’s making me itch.”

“Not a word about the cold? I’m surprised.”

“Bracing,” Crowley lied. “Invigorating.” He held his hand out to the angel, and they flew from the roof, over the celebrating city lit with torches.

***

In the unassuming little room upstairs above the bookshop, Aziraphale couldn’t help noting that Crowley flinched for just a second when he lit the fireplace. “You live in a tinderbox, Aziraphale.”

The angel cocked his head sideways. “I think I can protect myself, my dear.”

Crowley shrugged and opened the first bottle. “Must be tiring, that same miracle every day.”

“I get by.”

“So,” Crowley said, manifesting two unnecessarily expensive cups. “To Her Majesty. May she be less than half as nutters as her predecessors.”

“Her father was quite a piece of work.”

“Her sister was worse, from what I heard.”

“Well, she was very devout.”

Crowley snorted.

A deep drink, and grey-blue eyes stared into yellow ones across the little table.

“So.” Crowley said at last. “Your people. Where the fuck are they in all of this? Because I’ll be blessed if I can tell where mine are. Aside from a few go this, do that bits of busywork, I’ve barely heard a peep in ten years. I’m feeling obsolete, old pal. Down in Italy, they’re not even giving Hell all the credit for War and Pestilence’s hard work anymore.”

Aziraphale reached for the bottle and refilled his cup hastily. He pressed his lips together and looked at a precarious stack of leatherbound Latin prayerbooks leaning on a sagging shelf. There wasn’t anything useful there, particularly.

“I wish I knew,” he finally said. “A lot of my favourite old churches were destroyed, you know.” _Some of my favourite people too,_ he didn’t say.

Crowley laughed flatly. “Sorry,” he said. “You do know this whole island has a target painted on it so big it spills over to Ireland, right? If she doesn’t marry a Catholic soon, I give her six months.”

“She won’t marry at all if she can possibly avoid it,” Aziraphale said. “I have a hunch about this. Her father had her mother beheaded—would you?”

Crowley threw up his hands. “Sane ruling dynasty – that’s not possible, is it?”

Aziraphale sighed. “I suppose you’re questioning the divine right too. You might as well. Everyone else is these days.”

“I hate to be behind the times.”

Aziraphale decided to change the subject. “So how was Italy?”

“Oh, it’s fantastic as long as you stay away from Rome. I was in Venice. Florence. Nice art if you don’t mind all the half-naked pudgy angels in it. And it’s wonderful to meet courtesans who can read again.”

Aziraphale raised an eyebrow. Two, in fact.

Crowley took this as encouragement. “Why, there’s talk of letting women on the stage, no less. How bloody scandalous. I don’t see the shock value, they might as well – the castrati sing better and the boys are prettier anyway, and more…”

“Compliant?”

“Very good at making a tempter feel obsolete,” said Crowley, smiling as though he just swallowed a goat whole and was about to take a nice week’s nap.

Aziraphale refilled his glass and half emptied it again. “You always have been so generous with your favours. Why, if one didn’t know better, one might almost accuse you of Charity.”

“I prefer to think of it as a form of Gluttony. In addition to the obvious, of course.”

Of course. It had to have been the wine—there must always be something to blame, and Crowley’s boss was hardly a good source in this case—but Aziraphale just smiled and said calmly, “I wonder what you’d call it if _I_ took a mortal lover for a change.”

Crowley’s ungracious spray of red wine across the table followed by manic cackling wasn’t quite the effect Aziraphale was aiming for. “Do you have anyone special in mind, or just the next poor sod who walks into your shop?”

Aziraphale narrowed his eyes. “Don’t be absurd. It was purely theoretical.”

Ah yes. Crowley did look relieved. And very intent. Aziraphale awkwardly got to his feet and turned to the window, where a wind was picking up. He could feel its damp cool through the tiny chinks in the panes. It wasn’t doing enough for the muzziness in his mind, though. “I do feel useless sometimes. When I’m not feeling that I should just go somewhere deserted until all the madness passes. Less populated. Simpler. I used to know what to do, I think.”

Crowley grunted something, and Aziraphale could hear him swallow. “If you’d learned anything useful in all the time we’ve been on this rock, you think it’d be that the madness never passes. Not for long.”

Aziraphale sighed and watched the skimpy snow making its heroic effort. “I just don’t see why…the sad thing is, I’ve got so many books in here that could get someone burned…”

Crowley’s cup hit the table with a clang. Aziraphale was about to turn around, but then he felt hands on his shoulders and dared not. Crowley’s grip was firm and warm, sliding up and down Aziraphale’s arms, and once again the subject was effectively changed, or so he thought.

“Don’t speak of that,” Crowley commanded. “Not now. I’m thoroughly sick of the subject. And the smell of it.”

“Hope,” Aziraphale said softly, “You’ve got that, too. Every time you see me, you always hope I’ll go to bed with you. Maybe by now you even have Faith that I will.”

“Not Faith, but Reason,” Crowley said, nuzzling Aziraphale’s cheek, sliding his tongue behind the angel’s ear. Aziraphale drew in breath sharply, surprised as always by the intensity of that surge of desire, the direct connection between those sensitive parts Crowley was tasting and those he was about to touch…it was Natural Law, wasn’t it? Curse him for _knowing._

Crowley’s arms wrapped around him from behind, pulling him into a fierce embrace, and the demon was whispering something not completely coherent, and Aziraphale closed his eyes and shivered. This was different somehow. He didn’t know what it was he felt yet, but Crowley was definitely attempting to express something. One hand pulled his collar away and the front of his robe open, and Crowley was still whispering as he bit the crook of Aziraphale’s neck: “Fuck. Azzziraphale, I…please…” One hand sank down Aziraphale’s belly, drawing his hips back.

“Crowley…dearest…please…”

“What? Anything!”

“Stop prodding my arse with that _thing.”_

“Oh cripes.”

“Churl,” Aziraphale said warmly, caressing Crowley’s arms, leaning back against him and humming in surprise as the cold draught from the window and the warmth of the fireplace fought for attention on his—on their—suddenly very bare skin. “Yes, just get rid of it all…” He turned his head a little awkwardly, requesting Crowley’s mouth onto his as he reached his hands back and grasped slim hips.

“You like that better?” Crowley growled—still prodding, but with something Aziraphale did indeed like better, and he said so, panting a little.

“Crowley, you…”

“Hush. Just let me…”

“Ohh, touch me…”

“Mmm, you’re hard.”

“What you do to me…”

“What I _want_ to do to you…”

Aziraphale’s head was spinning. Too much, too fast. Crowley spitting in his hand, doing that transmogrification thing of his—water into wine, spit into oil, not such a big leap in its blasphemous way. Aziraphale shivered and bit his lip, lifting one knee onto a chair, bracing his hands against the windowsill and feeling very wanton as he opened his eyes and found the sky looking back at them.

Crowley was gasping in his ear, pleading, “Please…let me into you…I want…”

“Yes…yes, please yes,” Aziraphale closed his eyes and sank down into that trance that took him when he was first stretching like that, taking that sweet and strange invasion.

“I _need…”_ Crowley gave a small shove, and Aziraphale yelped a little. “Shit, did I hurt you?”

“No…a little…don’t stop.”

“Oh…Aziraphale,” Crowley groaned so softly, and then Aziraphale noticed for certain something was strange. For once he’d worked himself deep within, Crowley barely moved at all, simply wrapped his arms more tightly around the angel and held him, burying his face in Aziraphale’s hair and sniffing…trembling terribly. And Aziraphale leaned back against him, spreading his thighs a little wider and holding onto Crowley’s arms. Crowley seemed to need something he couldn’t ask for, and anything Aziraphale could give…well…there wasn’t much left he hadn’t given. The lean arms crossed over his chest, moist kisses explored his back, and all Crowley seemed to want was to touch him and taste him with a maddening slowness. But the demon’s little movements inside him, no harder than breathing, were giving him a slowly rising, diffuse sort of pleasure that threatened even this kind of blurry awareness.

“Oh, Crowley…dearest..my…mmmm,” he breathed, silenced by a hand.

Whatever composure Crowley had lost, he was taking his time to regain. Had the moon been visible, Aziraphale could have watched it move a considerable distance, at least as long as he could keep his eyes open. Crowley’s hands roamed him so slowly, as if reacquainting himself with the front of Aziraphale’s body, all its sensitive places and little rises and falls…

Aziraphale was entranced by the slower-than-slow pace set by Crowley’s unusual, slightly off-kilter style of need.

“You’re so hot…tight…_oh!”_ Crowley exclaimed, at last seeming to remember that they were supposed to _move,_ harder, deeper.

Aziraphale was completely stunned by how hard he came into Crowley’s hand, almost hitting his head on the windowsill before he recovered himself and leaned back into Crowley’s helpless thrusts.

They were both glad there was a bed there to receive them when they finally collapsed spent upon it, small and rickety as it was. It hadn’t been there before, after all.

“Don’t ask,” Crowley said preemptively. “Just please don’t.”

“I won’t,” Aziraphale said, tucking Crowley’s head under his chin, kissing the damp dark hair. He didn’t like promising that; he had certainly wanted to.

Far away across the city, a young woman felt a great swell of triumph and relief. She was constrained in stiff, awkward jeweled clothing but her pretty red hair was free and unbound, and she knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that she was, indeed, strong enough for this—as surely as if one of God’s angels had appeared in a beam of light to tell her so.

  
***

When Crowley awoke, cold grey light filtered into the little room through the one small window. The fire was down to embers and the room was chill, and he had no incentive to get up at all. He reached out and found he was alone in the bed, which was most vexing. (He remembered that lovely whorehouse in Jerusalem so long ago; he remembered a fumbling, languid, half-awake encore performance with Aziraphale, who kept the sheets warm like anything…and had insisted on paying the madam for the room and tipping generously at that, though they’d not used the services of any of the staff. He could really have gone for some of that right now. The angel, that is, not the madam.)

But it was morning, and he was hungry for many things—breakfast at least, if that was the best he could get—and he heard voices below, so he crept reluctantly out of bed, manifesting himself a warm dressing gown, and listened at the trap door.

“Oh, dear chap, you really shouldn’t have.”

“I thought of you in Brussels—oh, don’t worry, it’s a copy of a copy, made in my own hand, as faithful as I could render it.”

“No, John, you _really_ shouldn’t have…it is on the banned list, and…honestly, after what you went through, I should think…”

“I think the darkest days are behind us, my friend. God Save Her Majesty, she is a wise woman with no fear of knowledge.”

Crowley felt his eyes narrowing as he recognised the music of temptation playing so loudly downstairs, and he having no part in it. As quietly as he could, he opened the door a slight crack and peered down the stairs—little more than a glorified ladder really—until he could see Aziraphale and the tall, handsome man he spoke with. He recognised a fellow optimist. He didn’t like it.

“But…when you were…”

“I was in no danger. Or rather, not from the directions that it may have appeared.”

“Mm-hmm, I understand now.”

Crowley could see Aziraphale’s head nodding over the book. Probably only half listening to what the man was saying, missing half the surface words and not even realising the whole other conversation that ought to be going on underneath. He hated watching Aziraphale sometimes—it made him think about all the times he couldn’t be around. Someday that angel was going to walk right into real, serious trouble opening up under his feet because he had his nose stuck in a book. Being that clueless ought to _hurt_—just as a warning.

Crowley himself almost missed the sharp brown eyes that glanced up at him and _saw_ him. He did his best to disappear, blessing under his breath. The man said nothing.

“What would you like from me today?” Aziraphale asked him cheerfully, and Crowley ground his teeth.

“I just came to bring you a gift, my friend. But…”

There always was one.

“Do keep your eyes open for works of the nature we discussed before. A little bird tells me to pay special attention to manifestations of the Word.”

“I shall do that, gladly,” said Aziraphale, and Crowley could hear exactly what sort of smile was in his voice, specifically.

He threw himself back into the little bed, with some vague intention of pretending to be asleep when Aziraphale came up the stairs with breakfast, but he was too tense to make it convincing at all. “Who was that?” he blurted.

“A _friend,_ Crowley, it’s impossible to stay in the same place for any time without collecting a few, as hard as I may try.”

Crowley gave a theatrical sigh. “Well I know that.”

“Not _your_ kind of friend.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Crowley insinuated, accepting a cup of hot cider most grudgingly. “There’s something snaky about that one.”

“Well, of course, he was a spy for Elizabeth when she was very out of fashion. Almost burned for heresy too, but I imagine the worst is over from his end of things. I didn’t expect to see him so early in the morning after the feast, that’s for certain. But he said he had strange dreams, and awoke feeling refreshed.”

Crowley blinked. Maybe Aziraphale wasn’t as hopeless as he’d thought. “Heresy, eh? What’s that book he gave you?”

“Did you eavesdrop on our entire conversation, or just the exciting parts?”

“The parts that woke me up.”

“A Qabalistic work salvaged from Spain and smuggled to Amsterdam and then Brussels, if you must know.”

Crowley rolled his eyes. “We live that drivel, why do you have to read about it?”

Aziraphale shrugged and smiled mildly. “Perhaps I’d like to know just how much they know.” He rummaged among the simple foodstuffs on the tray, started nibbling on a scone. “Hungry?”

“Yes,” Crowley said, and reached past the tray to Aziraphale, pulling the angel down on top of him. A second’s adjustment, and Aziraphale was right there with him. His mouth was full of crumbs and honey.

Crowley made a small protesting noise when Aziraphale broke away and rose up on his knees, straddling Crowley’s thighs. Aziraphale wrenched away the covers and pulled Crowley’s robe open and leaned over him, one hand on the wall, simply gazing down at him in the clear daylight. Crowley lay frozen on his back, mostly-naked and aroused and exposed, watching those eyes move up and down his body as if they owned it—like one of his books, studying it. Left to right (English, Latin); Right to left (Hebrew, Arabic) and he could feel the touch of that look: possessing, memorising. He wanted more, and he stretched out a little, one hand over his head grasping the bedpost, the other reaching out, wanting to take the angel’s hand and put it somewhere.

There were warm, smooth fingertips at his throat and his collarbone, moving out over his left shoulder.

“You had a scar here,” Aziraphale said quietly. “I think I might’ve given it to you.”

“Gone,” Crowley breathed.

“Good,” Aziraphale said, and bent low, kissing the spot where it had been. “but—“

“Little secret,” Crowley whispered, nails running down the angel’s back through the scratchy wool. “You like my body? Truth is—“

“I like it a lot,” Aziraphale purred. “I always have.”

“Not this one, you haven’t.”

“Hm?”

“It’s brand new.”

Aziraphale suddenly froze, staring straight into Crowley’s eyes. “What? What happened?”

Crowley deflected that one quick. Or rather, ignored it completely. “In fact…last night notwithstanding…”—here he licked his lips. “You could almost say that…technically…in a manner of speaking…I’m a bit of a virgin. If you like that sort of thing.”

Aziraphale blinked.

“Oh, I’m so nervous,” Crowley smirked, moving against Aziraphale pleadingly. “Take me. But be gentle.”

Aziraphale rolled his eyes, and Crowley wasn’t sure if it was at him or at himself for being very aroused by that, because the angel clearly was. And there was something almost cruel about the tender way Aziraphale made love to him, and Crowley wasn’t sure if he should enjoy it as much as he did, because it was clearly meant as a form of Mercy.

***

“So,” Aziraphale finally said that eve, coming back up the stairs for the last time when the sky’s blue deepened slowly to cobalt, wine in his hand, to find Crowley dressed and staring out on the street.

“How far out of their way do you think your people would go to help you if you got in serious trouble here?” Crowley asked.

“Not very, and I wouldn’t expect it,” Aziraphale said flatly.

Crowley just nodded. “I imagine you’re supposed to stay out of it.”

“I do, usually.”

“I know.” Crowley turned back to the window.

“There’s something you’re not telling me,” Aziraphale said to his back. “Did you think I wouldn’t notice?”

“There’s a lot I’m not telling you, because it’s not going to do you a blessed bit of good to know.”

“We have a bargain.”

“Need-to-know basis, Aziraphale,” said Crowley, and his eyes were cold. “I’d think your spooky human friends would know all about that.”

“You know it isn’t just a business matter…” Aziraphale touched Crowley’s back gently, and the demon flinched at his touch for the first time in two hundred years.

“Alas,” Crowley agreed. Aziraphale looked hurt.

“I don’t suppose,” the angel finally ventured, “that if you got in a tight spot, your…side…would be of any help?”

Crowley just laughed, rather bitterly. “I’m on my own up here, but for when it suits their purposes to abuse me.”

Not entirely, Aziraphale thought but did not say; after all, the promises he’d wanted to make weren’t exactly true, were they? He’d give anything to be able to make one he knew for sure he could keep.

Crowley was in a _mood,_ and it wasn’t helping his own.

  
~~~~~~~~~~~


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Crowley tests the limits of sulking and meets problematic mortals of his own; Aziraphale dodges an awkward proposition; and both get an eyeful through the looking-glass.

**Paris, France, 1578**

Crowley lay watching his curtains sway in the breeze. It hadn’t got any more interesting in the last four hours. Time to move on, he most certainly thought, and not only because Paris was dreary. Pestilence had come through once again, insisting on taking Crowley out for a few rounds—mostly to see if he had any good gossip, which he didn’t. The Apocalyptic Manifestation was getting a bit of a swelled head, in Crowley’s opinion (to go with all of his other unattractive swellings); yes, yes, the plagues were very impressive and persistent, and the new look suited him (leprosy was so retro; bubonic plague was all the rage in Europe and smallpox stocks were rising in the New World). But Azrael still got more iconic representation, and that was a sore spot.

Well, of all the Manifestations one could run into, DEATH himself was hard to avoid in Paris, and busy as he was he always seemed to find more time to piss and moan about that Flamel character blowing him off yet again. Really, Crowley thought, one can only leave a flaming bag of brimstone on the alchemist’s doorstep so many times in a century before the joke starts to get old. But Azrael’s sense of vengeance, often indistinguishable from his sense of humour, remained eternally unchanged.

The humans were worse. Nowhere near as complicated as Italian sinners on the whole, French sinners were inclined to repetitions of more mundane variations on sins of the flesh and the pocketbook (often combining the two in vaguely clever ways), and their Black Artes seemed to involve an interminable number of nighttime trips to Les Innocents with shovels. Come to think of it, that might explain their obsession with seduction talismans. It wasn’t as if anyone were going to willingly come near them after one of those little expeditions made them smell ten times worse than the average Parisian, which was saying something.

Crowley was having the sulk of a decade, and lo, it was good. He had a jug of wine balanced unsteadily on his bare stomach, he was alone in his bed (a much more common occurrence than he led a certain angel to believe), and to punctuate certain moments in his pouting that he thought were particularly impressive bits of broodwork, he weakly threw another spike at the wall. Some fixed-eyed student of Ye Artes Arcane had given him a rather lopsided Tree of Life diagram once, and he’d been using it as a dartboard for years. (He almost never managed to hit anything above Geburah, but once he had completely by accident bullseyed the spot where Da’ath should have been and heard an indignant yelp from some being he hadn’t dared to try to identify. The Fabric of the Universe rippled only a bit in annoyance.)

He’d spent twenty years being conspicuously (to himself at least) almost everywhere except Italy or England, his third choice for non-appearance being Spain. The Eastern Mediterranean had been an exciting place a hundred years ago, and in those days he’d even managed to convince Aziraphale that maybe that pretty, mountainous Wallachia wasn’t such a great place to take his refreshing missionary-work-disguised-as-holiday-or-was-it-vice-versa just then, after that exhausting fall of Constantinople business. (The Prince at the time in that province was quite nasty, though effective.)

Aziraphale. As if that weren’t a name that could shoot his brooding levels up by a hundred angstpules.

Every time he got one of those commendations he didn’t deserve—and the Son of the Dragon himself had been another one, Crowley barely even met him—it was half flinch, half relief, and the ineffable third half was a sort of secret smile. He had a real secret, after all: surely having seduced an angel must count for something. But it was none of their bloody _business._ The very idea of exposing that to beings designed by nature not to appreciate it…

_Well, then why can I appreciate it? At least I think I do._

All too well, he thought, which is why he was avoiding England again. Bless it, Aziraphale _cared,_ and Crowley felt as helpless as a newly-manifested imp in the light of such nuanced and fussy attention.

How exactly had they got from Point A to Point Gimel or Gamma or wherever they were, anyhow? Oh, Crowley had tried to pass it off to himself as some kind of tempting challenge, but really, that hill on Iona with the rocks and what happened there? Honestly? He’d been trying to show someone he was already almost starting to think of as a friend (despite the vestigial clumsy use of weaponry) something _fun._ As in, hey, I enjoy this a lot, maybe you’ll like it too and we can do it together. Like chess. Like fishing. Or something.

Well, not exactly like that. He remembered when chess was invented, and he was pretty blessed sure he hadn’t spent centuries waking up sticky from fevered dreams that involved capturing Aziraphale’s rook. Hadn’t stared helplessly at those poufy hands and got all restless in the pants thinking about what they’d feel like moving a pawn those first two virgin squares. And he suspected it wasn’t normal to see one’s fishing buddy’s face last of all in the final moments of a particularly unpleasant discorporation.

It might be time to move on again, he thought. Maybe Venice isn’t so bad these days. He resolved to do so, after the last of the wine, a desultory wank, and a few months’ more of napping.

***

He didn’t yet anticipate meeting a philosopher who could actually say something interesting.

“So that if in bodies, matter, and entities there were not mutation, variety, and vicissitude, there would be nothing agreeable, nothing good, nothing pleasurable. So…because justice has no act except where there is error, harmony is not effectuated except where there is contrariety,” said the young ex-monk from Nola-near-Naples, writing a dense allegory about a great career change of the gods.

Well, Crowley thought, here at least is someone who knows a good deal about vicissitude and transitions, hardly able to set down his hat in a house before some church stiff rushes to denounce it and its suspicious lack of lice.

Giordano Bruno was, if nothing else, a natural-born troublemaker--and wherever trouble was made, Crowley could keep boredom at bay and embellish some distracting reports. Reports that distracted him from England at any rate. Crowley watched him from a distance for years—until Bruno decided he should try his luck in England, which Crowley thought was just _his_ luck.

When he found out that Aziraphale was still keeping far, far too much company with that bookish occultnik who nurtured pretensions to holiness even while he whispered in Elizabeth’s ear about Empire Britannia, Crowley thought he was being admirably restrained in not smashing anything in his jealous pique. But far away in an abandoned Paris garret, a piece of parchment on a wall with its dart-riddled Sephiroth went up in flames and took the entire block with it.

  
**Mortlake, England, 1581**

“Oh…” said Aziraphale in a whisper of ecstatic shock. “I’ve never seen…you have…oh, _John,_ it’s…” The angel clapped his fist to his mouth to keep from embarrassing himself further.

“So long it took me to get you here,” John said with a rueful little smile. “Her Majesty Herself is easier to persuade than you are.”

Aziraphale was consumed with a rather blasphemous intensity of reverence and a smattering of something he feared was at least Covetousness, if not actual Lust, for John’s library.

The house had once been a rather unremarkable cottage, but it was beginning to grow ungainly appendages at an alarming rate, all of them crammed ever fuller and fuller with brittle parchments and dry papers and, unnervingly close to them, the alembics and vessels and burners and pipes and tubes and grinders and filers and measuring instruments that suggested the manufacturing of strong spirits to the uneducated (and the summoning of them to the paranoid). There was no space on the wall that was free of maps and charts and nattered scrawl of sigils; even the windows were occupied with astrolabes and sextants and strange arrangements of mirrors and lenses, poking out at the veiled stars.

“Does it meet whatever your expectations may have been?” John asked, grinning.

“Expectations?’ Aziraphale said, “No, I couldn’t have imagined this. I should have, I know you’ve been collecting for thirty years, but…”

“A goodly amount of it has passed through your own shop.”

“I have to confess, I don’t like letting them go.”

“Nor do I. I want them all to come to me and stay here, to land on my hand like tame doves. I have found a worthy rival in you.”

That was probably what it was that Aziraphale had responded to when he’d first met John in that library at Cambridge all those years ago—the sense that he was a gentle soul, a scholar and mystic, a prayerful seeker after the true knowledge of the Mysteries who might poison his own mother for the right book but would make certain it was completely painless. It wasn’t so much a friendship as a reflection; Aziraphale thought that if he were a human, John Dee was exactly the kind of human he might have wanted to be. But he knew he could never have got away with a beard like that.

“Why do you ever leave?” Aziraphale finally asked.

“To acquire more, of course.”

“Bit of Her Majesty’s business too, they say,” Aziraphale insinuated. He wasn’t born yesterday—or indeed, at all.

“So the rumourmongers say,” John shrugged. “For my part, I think I can do my Lady’s work far better from here. But I go wherever I might be of use.”

“Of course,” Aziraphale said distractedly, because he was. There was nowhere he could put his eyes that wouldn’t lead to some bottomless fascination. If only there were some polite way of getting rid of the man himself for a few years. Finally he settled on a bit of handwritten scrawl that lay beside a crystal glass, a few sigils and calculations and some things that could only be doodles, a half-page in several languages that was completely incomprehensible in all of them, and one that made all the fine hairs on the back of Aziraphale’s neck stand completely on end.

_Oh no. He can’t be serious._

“W-What is this?”

Codework, mostly,” said John dismissively, as obviously baiting as possible. “Dead-ends, alas. Some scratchwork for a star chart.”

Aziraphale shook his head sternly. “You knew I was coming. You wouldn’t have left it out if you didn’t want me to ask about it.”

John smiled wryly. “You have my measure as always. This is what it is: sometimes I worry I have come to the limits of my library.”

“I doubt that.”

John rolled his eyes. “Yes, it’s possible. At any rate, I have come to believe that our Creator would not have put this complicated Glory into such systems and processes, and given us the desire to understand it all, were there not ways for a righteous petitioner to know. And I have devoted my life to collecting and understanding the works of all those who had glimpses and insights, and I do believe a pathway has been laid for us to ask…”

“Well, I would certainly never discourage prayer…” Aziraphale said, a bit woodenly.

“Yes, that’s what I mean – but a more scientific and properly focused prayer, using methods I think I’ve—“

“Beware,” Aziraphale said wearily, unable to keep a certain tone from creeping automatically into his voice.

“Risky, yes, but we would never know the New World were it not for brave sailors and wise mapmakers—“

“Yes, your friend Mercator did wonderful work with the—“ Aziraphale flailed.

“I’m making an _analogy.”_ John sighed, obviously thinking that for all his learning, his fellow bibliophile could be rather dense.

“I’m trying to _change the subject!”_ Aziraphale snapped.

“And I _won’t have it changed!”_ John shouted. “This is important to me.”

Aziraphale crossed his fingers behind his back in the last-ditch hope that John wasn’t going to say what he knew perfectly well John was going to say.

“I seek to ask my questions more directly,” John finally did say. “I have learned of a book, from the Ethiopians, on what little is known of the lost language before Babel. I believe it is possible to make sure I contact only the messengers of God and not less wholesome spirits.”

Aziraphale closed his eyes and prayed for strength. For all his learning, his fellow bibliophile could be awfully dense. “You want to talk with angels.”

“It sounds preposterous, I know…even blasphemous. But—“

“Well, I don’t suppose it’s _impossible…”_ Aziraphale sighed.

“But I need help,” John said sadly. “I am no medium. The conversation of spirits almost always eludes me – perhaps I am too much a creature of the intellect and not enough of the soul. I know there are those through whom they come more easily, and I must say, as long as I’ve known you, I have on occasion thought—“

“What?” blurted Aziraphale.

“That there is something about you…”

“You want me to be your medium? Have them speak through me?”

“I was thinking of proposing that, yes. Have you a gift of skrying?”

Aziraphale pinched his nose. “No. I really, _really_ don’t think I do.”

  
**The Cock and Bull Tavern, 1582**

What did it take for a body to be able to hear himself think in such a place? (Answer: for the body, there was no help for it—the twenty-seventh stanza of a vaguely musical pornographic epic involving divers Catholic nobility and a stunning array of farm animals, some long extinct and some newly discovered, was equipped to drown out even thoughts involving sex, food, and/or shelter for most mortals, much less anything more rarified.)

But this particular body did not in fact need any part of said physical body to hear, which is why he was able to eavesdrop on the ratty-looking young man three tables over, who bundled his black cowl closer around his head to hide the sight of his cropped ears, which everyone paying attention had already glimpsed.

“The jewels, no, that I had nothing to do with. And even so, had I the means to recompense the lady out of the goodness of my heart, I would do so, for it pains me to see such distress.”

“But the way I heard the tale, Mr. ‘Talbot,’” said Crowley, insinuating himself, “is that you do have the means, for you made the coins by your very own hand.”

The other man at the table giggled, but he was so drunk he would have giggled at Azrael himself doing a poledance on his scythe just before he brought it down.

“Lies, all damned lies,” said the affronted cosener, affronted as only a true cosener can be.

“Well, yes,” Crowley shrugged. “Technically.”

“And who are you who claims to know my business so well?”

“Just another cunning man on the road, seeking some generous patron who needs to hear from the spirits, that’s all,” Crowley said with a rueful little sneer. The type was common enough these days—in more ways than one.

“I make deals with no demons,” said “Talbot,” looking around the grim little inn warily. “Only wholesome spirits. As do you, I’m sure.”

“Quite,” Crowley smirked. “Now, listen, my good fellow,” he said leaning in close as an irresistibly wicked idea—his first genuine one in a good long time and he was going to make it count—took hold of him. “If it’s work you’re seeking, I have it on good authority there is a gentleman not far from here very interested in the services of a medium. Not an especially well-to-do man, but by all accounts very high in the Queen’s favour. They say she consults with him often. No doubt this could stand you in some…safety, should you need it.”

The young man raised one wily eyebrow. “And if this job is so fine, why did you not pursue it yourself?”

“Oh, I would be very unsuited. My specialty is not what he’s seeking. You though…you strike me as a true _tabula rasa_.”

“Thank you, I suppose,” the young man said, eyes darting. “And this gentleman would be…”

“A Dr. Dee, that’s his name,” Crowley said, pretending to be absorbed in remembering this information so as not to grin too hard when “Talbot” started at the name. “His house is at Mortlake, and remember, he wants only the conversation of angels. You’d do well to wash your face at least, Mr. _Kelley.”_

The man blanched. “How do you – you…”

“I’m good at what I do as well. Please credit our profession,” said the demon with a cosener’s offense.

  
**London-to-Mortlake or Somewhere Between, Spring 1583**

Crowley didn’t particularly like doing this sort of thing—which of course he could do—for in all his millennia it never done him any spectacular amount of good, and he couldn’t shake the feeling that, in addition to being unnecessarily risky, it was, well…trite.

But the open gateway kept buzzing in the back of his mind—it would be rather like a telephone ringing constantly if he had a frame of reference for that simile yet—and all he had to do really was close his eyes and get a glimpse of the frightened and hapless Kelley sprawled out on the floor and clutching at phantom pains. Kelley was an open channel for an endless pageant of self-replicating, kaleidoscopic and incomprehensible symbolism. Being after being, introducing themselves with improbable names and spouting grandiose claims to sit at this Hand and that Hand of Glory, showing vision after vision and reciting combinations of number after number.

Dee’s cool, unflappable scientific interest in it all was scarier than anything the angels could come up with, even when they laid claim to catching all sorts of evil miscreants getting loose of the stones and helping themselves to Dee’s records.

As pantomimes went, Crowley thought it could have benefited from a great deal of editing.

And yet a few things at least were clear – the spirits were no longer limited to the crystals. And they were no longer restricted to the known and honest angels.

And somewhere in the shadows of that crowded room, watching it all, a fidgeting streak of silver wringing his metaphorical hands and sneaking peeks at Dee’s _Monas Hieroglyphica_ for more clues to the human’s hope for a sort of Grand Unification Theory of the Spirit World, was Aziraphale.

Crowley gave a long-suffering sigh, and finished the sigils and circles of chalk on his rented floor, and left his physical body behind to crash the party.

Dimly disguised in a raiment of cloud and a pattern of numbers that added up to shadow, he took cover in a background of the stone where the occasional entity even less reputable than himself swam up and away again, waving something that might have been a wing and might have been a tentacle in the maelstrom of dark aether. He couldn’t see terribly well, because the light of the angelic presences elsewhere made the darkness he swam through that much deeper, but he had enough of a vantage point to know where it was too dangerous to go.

Peering out from here at the nervous faces of Dee and Kelley in another dimension was like being deep under water and staring up at the sunlit surface, where the material world was rippling and unreal.

There were so many beings crowded in the astral soup around the entrance through the stone that Crowley was starting to worry he wouldn’t be able to see anything at all without sticking his head right up under Uriel’s wingpit, which would be a bad idea indeed. But then, the veil parted as a streak of light came up through the depths, all blinding in green and gold.

From the general psychic murmur all around, Crowley was clearly not the only one surprised as the ball of light breached the surface of the stone, and as if through a long glass tunnel he could clearly see the light take shape in front of Dee and Kelley, right there in their parlour.

“Am I not a fine little maiden?” said the spirit coquettishly, and indeed she was; wearing the form of a golden-haired girl-child in green with a crown of sunlight on her head and a crystal ball in her hand. “I am Madimi.”

Madimi left a gateway open in her wake; there was no angel stepping in to close it behind her, nor were there any demons rushing to take advantage of the lapse.

With calculating eyes, Crowley watched Kelley recoil and Dee lean forward, and behind them, among the book stacks, a silver shadow all but rest its head on its hand contemplatively, unseen by anyone but Crowley, for only he knew what to look for.

They always tried to be so scrupulous about guarding against wickedness, those humans with their prayers and their sigils and their little rules about who could and who couldn’t speak which Name, ad great nauseam. It made Crowley want to reach through the glass and pull Aziraphale in and give them an eyeful of just how wicked an angel could be. But all eyes were on Madimi, who had a light of heaven in her hand and a glint of hell in her eye, and to all appearances seemed to be, impossibly enough, something utterly new under the Sun.

She didn’t even have to extend her little finger for Crowley to know she already had Dee wrapped around it.****

  
Mortlake, 1583

Aziraphale was not proud of himself for this. It was the sort of thing that of course he _could_ do, and some strains of thought Upstairs held that it was perfectly fine to keep an eye out for potential error, yet there were others who (more quietly) held that Free Will meant exactly that, and the power to go skulking about like this was one easily abused.

After all, a whole generation of angels had pretty thoroughly abused the power of invisibility and inaudibility and the whole rest of the confusing array of unmanifesting to spy on the fair daughters of Men in the bath, and no good had come of _that._

Aziraphale just thought it was rude. He wouldn’t appreciate it being done to him, after all. (And of course it had been, but mostly by a certain demon it was certainly within his power to smite for it).

Still, he hadn’t liked the looks of that medium, and surely it was within his purview to make certain that a devout man wasn’t led astray.

Once he’d started, it was bloody hard to stop anyway. _Uriel?! What are you drinking, er, I mean, thinking?!_

John was frantically scribbling down every piece of babble that came out of Talbot’s mouth while the latter stared fixedly into a crystal ball. Talbot wasn’t speaking any language known on Earth to very many beings besides the two others in the room: John and Aziraphale.

It was, in fact, a detailed lecture on the rules of grammar of the language. If nothing else, folks Upstairs knew how to appeal to a Cambridge man.

It was slightly preferable to Michael’s holding forth on the proper construction of a ritual table for seven hours, though – Aziraphale had never realised the Archangel took such a personal interest in carpentry and interior design.

Aziraphale had given up on trying to understand his colleagues long ago, (“ineffable” in his vocabulary translating roughly to a sentiment that would be expressed more concisely half a millennium later as “WTF?”). He found himself rifling through John’s effects and books again, hoping to get another good look at that _Corpus Hermeticum,_ or at the very least a limited-edition Trithemius.

Amid John’s tempting papers, Aziraphale passed the shewstones not being used at the moment: crystal balls and skryers’ paint-lined bowls and astrologers’ lenses, and among them the convex mirror of obsidian from the New World, that exquisite circle of heavy black glass from the belly of the volcano. John had told him how it misted over when one of the priesthood of the savages studied it in a particular way, and that was how that bloodthirsty god _(patron of sorcerers, no, don’t see it that way, it’s not as if John means to…)_ had got his name, Smoking Mirror.

It had a particular psychic clang all its own that Aziraphale found rather disturbing, and as he studied it, that particular visionary grey haze began to rise.

Among the gods of that faraway land, Smoking Mirror had a rival, and his name was Feathered Serpent. It wouldn’t do to read too much into that.

But when Aziraphale let his eyes go and really see what was amid the smoke, he wished he hadn’t. It wasn’t as if there wasn’t enough of it right where he was not so long ago, all the time; the stench of burning flesh, the screams, the glee of the crowd with their accursed snacks and ale and cheering as human fat melted and sizzled among the faggots.

He envied the Enochian conjugation lecture terribly at that moment, for as much as he tried to shake his head clear, the horrible deaths in the glass weren’t stopping. Aziraphale had a horrible sensation he was seeing them all. He was sure he’d recognised that poor girl after all, the one who’d put on men’s armour _(Michael, what were you drinking, er, I mean, thinking?!?)_

Amid the centuries of screams, there were too many he knew--including one he’d never heard before quite that way, which was familiar nonetheless, with its own particular timbre…

Not possible. Simply not possible. Surely he could have…

Aziraphale was having trouble believing the evidence of his own senses; after all, no reason to think this skrying glass of such sinister origin would tell the truth. He suspected that was why John rarely used it, after all. No reason at all--except that as far as he knew, it had no reason to lie.

It just made his mortal blood run colder than he could ever remember it being, and even his immortal aether chilled.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Crowley feels a mortal's charms and an angel's wrath (among other things), Aziraphale neglects some duties in favour of others, and many beans are spilled.

**London, Summer 1583**

Aziraphale didn’t see courtiers of such finery in his shop very often, and that was just as well; they clashed, their sweeping cloaks stirred up the dust, and they were generally more interested in keeping attention on themselves than discussing anything of import in the texts. Flash bastards.

This young knight had always been different, though. Perhaps it was his study with Dr. Dee; perhaps it was the sensitive probing nature of the poet; perhaps it was simply that he had the impeccably discreet manners of a spy.

“Good evening,” said Aziraphale absently.

“Good evening,” said Sir Philip Sidney cheerfully. “And Dr. Dee sends his regards and bids me stop by to tell you he’s leaving soon for Poland with Prince Laski.”

“That’s strange,” Aziraphale said. “Did he happen to mention why?”

“Well, I believe it was at Prince Laski’s request, not to be refused. I do find it rather strange he’s packed up so much of his library and his wife and children as well. I doubt it’s mere book-shopping and a few star charts for the Prince.”

“Oh dear,” Aziraphale shook his head, tried to look a little more harmless and befuddled, and peered straight into Sidney’s bright eyes. “Has there been trouble?”

“Not for him directly, but there were rumours of false coining, again…that Kelley is Saturnian in the worst way I’ve ever seen,” said Sidney.

“He’s going too, I take it,” Aziraphale sighed.

“But of course. Joined at the hip, those two.”

“A most unpleasant mental image.”

“My apologies,” said Sidney, cringing.

“Let’s speak of happier matters,” Aziraphale said. “Tell me what you know of this philosopher Giordano Bruno, who dedicated his book to you…”

Sidney laughed a little. “Well, Laski was certainly taken with him. Didn’t go over so well at Oxford, though, did he? Sometimes I wish he would mince words more, but then he would not be Bruno.”

“I thought he was rather harsh on the Calvinists, myself,” said Aziraphale airily. “But he can say what he likes about Aristotle.”

“Really? I didn’t think he was harsh enough. He says Geneva’s a dreadful place now.”

“Worse than France?”

“For him at least. Though he has a knack for wearing out welcomes.”

Aziraphale shrugged. “I’ve known a few with that gift in my day.”

  
***

Crowley, on the other hand, had been learning much more about the handsome heretic straight from the source.

“I doubt you’ll remember me,” said Crowley, pouring another glass of red, red wine. “But I believe we did meet in Paris, when you were speaking on heroic Eros and the Art of Memory…”

“I remember you well,” Bruno smiled. “In my memory palace, you have a very nice room.”

“A bedchamber, perhaps?” Crowley smirked.

Bruno demurred with a lush grin. The answer was not so much “no” as “later.”

“So what did you think of the lecture tonight?”

“I liked it a lot until I fell asleep. You have soothing cadences. You surprise me, you know. I fucking _hate_ the Dominicans. No offense.”

“Even the defrocked ones?”

“Those, of course, I like a good deal better.”

“Yes, well, I’m no longer so fond of the others myself.”

“I’m sure being _defrocked_ suits you quite well.”

“You sound as if you wish to do the honours yourself.”

Crowley only smiled his snakish smile. And changed the subject. “So…Diana, queen of the nymphs? I suppose maybe, if you got a chance to see her out of those ridiculous gowns, but…”

“Caught that, did you?” said Bruno, glancing around with a theatrical performance of nervousness.

“You don’t seem the Actaeon type, frankly.”

“Really? You’d never know it from all these hounds on my heels. But the Diana I glimpsed unguarded was truly Minerva. Or maybe Sophia. Sapienza. Wisdom, in any case.”

“I can never keep them straight either.”

“That’s because they’re all One, doofus,” said Bruno with a smile. “But in any case, it’s the only way these phantasms can work. The lover becomes that which he loves, that’s why the choice is so crucial, sacred or profane.”

“That’s my only criticism, really,” said Crowley. “I think you underestimate the power of the profane.”

“I was afraid of that. In the wretched monastery too long. Too many monks in my head still.” He shook his head and gave Crowley a piercing look. “You’re not human, are you?”

“Not really, no.”

“Fascinating.” Bruno shrugged. He didn’t seem particularly put out by this disclosure. “Might as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb.”

“With an attitude like that, I think you’ll go _far.”_

“But in which direction? Ah, well, I know life among the fearful didn’t have much to offer. It’s _all_ Ars Notoria to that bunch.”

“You must have been bored shitless.”

“Indeed, and you’ll find yourself getting denounced twice before breakfast if you yawn. Frighteningly sheltered lives, and the profane is exotic to them. Can you imagine getting all excited about a book that claims that spilling yourself on the sheets at night means you might be damned because you had sex with a demon?”

  
Crowley did a spit-take with his wine, his second that century. “They think _that’s_ enough to damn someone? Ha, if only ‘twere that easy.” (_But no, it’s really very fortunate that it isn’t,_ he thought but did not say.)

Bruno shook his head. “That’s what I thought. The whole lot of them needs desperately to get laid. That’s the least of my heresies. But if burned I must be, sooner or later, I’d rather it be for something more profound and less obvious.”

“Why do you think you ‘must be’?” Crowley asked, something in his belly suddenly sinking.

Bruno took a deep breath. “I’m afraid it’s the logical conclusion. Of course one cannot attain the Crown in mortal flesh, but it’s more than that. Alchemy calls for flame often in its transformations—at least I’m afraid my kind of it does. The sooner one knows one’s own chymical nature, the better, and I am of that element.”

“That’s all _metaphors!”_

Bruno looked at him deeply and calmly. “As one not native to this plane, I can see why you might think so. But what’s true for you may not be true for me…although now that I look at you more closely, I think you’ve—“

“What?”

“Never mind. It’s just the way the phantasm of the beloved possesses and overcomes the lover, that’s all. And my beloved is that transformation itself.”

Crowley shook his head and sat back, taking another deep drink. “I think you’ve lost me there, Philosopher.”

“Well, you haven’t actually read my latest book, have you? It’s all right. I’m working on another lecture about it. Maybe that’ll explain it better to you. I like England a great deal, by the way. The food and the weather may be terrible, but the air is a lot cleaner here.”

“It is, mostly. But more allegories involving seeing the Queen naked might be pushing your luck.”

***

At any rate, Bruno did not ultimately stay too long in England.

And neither did Crowley, for the very soil of the island started to make his feet itch with the desire to see Aziraphale in some more concrete way than through the fog of some sorcerer’s channellings: to report to him, conspire with him, unload it all on him in some delirious drunken orgy of regurgitated human heresies and a litany of accumulated tales of treachery and torture and see if Heaven could come up with anything to match it. Really, the best they could hope for would be to cancel each other out, and then heresy would win out in the end because Crowley would call checkmate by pushing Aziraphale against a wall and kissing him until…

Oh, but Hea—He—Somewhere forbid he should _interrupt_ something. Nowadays his nightmares involved finding _himself_ in one of Bruno’s allegories, or looking up through some erotic haze over Aziraphale’s bare shoulder and seeing the nosy face of the Queen’s pet angel-watcher peering through a glass darkly.

Fine. Try Germany, then?

  
**Krakow, Poland, 1585**

All things considered, Aziraphale much preferred visiting this way: honestly, and by the garden gate of the rented house.

Pretty Jane Dee herself opened the door, balancing a tray of food as best she could against her big belly. Aziraphale tried to remember times he had seen her when she wasn’t quite so pregnant, and found it was difficult—it rather seemed to be her default state. Her eyes went wide, and she smiled, banishing the tense weariness from her face almost in time. She was half her husband’s age, but the gap seemed to be narrowing.

“Why, Mr. Fell,” she cried. “What a surprise – John will be so glad to see you!”

“I was in town at a bookdealer’s request, my lady,” he said, doffing his hat. “I thought I would pay you all a visit, if it’s not too much of an imposition.” Jane’s load became lighter, and the toddlers around her feet stood up a little straighter.

John proved more challenging to soothe. For one thing, while he was clearly glad to see his old friend, it rather seemed to Aziraphale that he wasn’t sure at all how glad he should be. Fair enough—one couldn’t expect the man to believe in coincidence, after all.

“I’m _not_ here to spy on you,” he finally had to say, underlining it ever so slightly with a breath of the power of what he was. This may have been a mistake – for John blinked as though briefly, minutely startled, and then put on his fearsome thinking expression—but if so it was one Aziraphale was willing to make, for its ultimate effect was that John sighed, and snapped, and started outpouring a complicated tale of woe and wandering and utter confusion.

Finally, Dee gave up trying to explain it all in any sort of linear narrative, and simply pulled out his copious diaries. “Here,” he said to Aziraphale, throwing up his hands. “I don’t expect you to be able to tell me if I’m a prophet or a madman either. But I hope this at least will help explain why _I_ can’t explain it.”

Indeed, Aziraphale thought, emerging two days later. Several things were clear to him straightaway. One of them was that his celestial colleagues were _badly_ out of practice in communicating directly with humans. Dee was no slouch in the comprehending-the-incomprehensible department—he was about as good at it as one was going to get on Earth—but the obtuse mathematics of what was essentially a very dense technical manual were stretching even him to the breaking point.

Another obvious problem was that aside from the genuine angels sincerely trying to communicate, however elliptically, there were whole other categories of spirits coming through thinking that passing some particularly upsetting message of doom and despair, or making Kelley think his head was falling off, or conjuring up particularly meaningless but colourful hallucinations, or just flat-out lying, was an entertaining prank. No wonder Dee was starting to wonder if he was losing it completely: smattered in among the technical guidelines to angelic communication were prophecies of election and privilege, immediately countered the next day by some horrible warning of his house ransacked, his books stolen, his family dead, Kelley arrested—well, to be fair, the latter was starting to look likelier every day—countered the very next by reassurances that no, everything was fine.

And the third thing was that there was a fair amount in heaven and earth that even Aziraphale found he could not identify with any confidence. Madimi, for example, who had unnerved him from the very beginning—but who had at least been right about getting Kelley out of England in a timely manner. And he wished he had more assurance to offer his friend than a reading of the sincerity of his heart.

“I’m sure you think this is all quite insane,” Dee said. “I seem to remember you trying to dissuade me once, in your gentle way.”

“I suppose I did,” said Aziraphale. “I still can’t say for certain if I should have tried harder. But has anyone ever dissuaded you from something you were determined to do? It seems unlikely.”

“I’m sure I was not _meant_ to be dissuaded,” Dee said. “Still, the risk is on my head alone.”

“Where’s Kelley?”

Dee rolled his eyes. “At this moment, I’d prefer not to know.”

“You haven’t been getting along?”

Dee just laughed. “Delusions and tantrums and the police at my door. Delightful man. Perhaps the strain is getting to him – he doubts, you know. He doubts terribly, and then all Their wrath comes through him that much harder. I’m sure he knows I no longer trust him entirely. I suspect he knows They don’t either.”

Aziraphale wouldn’t have trusted Kelley with the silverware, much less delicate interdimensional communications that could affect the state of one’s immortal soul, but he also knew that ineffability didn’t get much more blatantly ineffable than in its choice of human vessels sometimes.

Aziraphale merely sighed, he patted John on the shoulder, he gave him a rare book on astronomy from Morocco, and did his best to leave him with a sense of calm. He’d have to go back to England soon, where a Mr. Spenser was getting antsy about his desperately-in-need-of-editing manuscript.

And to where a certain demon could easily find him, should he be so inclined. Aziraphale was growing weary of giving him space for a thirty-year sulk when he knew dam-er-darned well he’d done nothing wrong, and the worrying only made it worse. Sooner or later, he suspected he was going to snap and chase Crowley down. It wouldn’t be difficult. Just follow the trouble.

  
**Prague, Bohemia, 1588**

When a laughing demon emerged from the notorious tavern, the Vulture, in the company of two pickpockets, a fortuneteller, a schizophrenic, three prostitutes of four different genders, and a specialist in stolen marbles, he didn’t expect his company to get any better—or worse, depending on your point of view.

But in the dark of a winding alley where the torches shivered out, his crowd dispersed in terror when he was struck painfully down by a flash of Divine light.

“Ouch! Ow! Do you have to be so bloody…” Crowley winced, slipping a tooth back into place.

“I’m sorry,” said Aziraphale, picking him up. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. I just need to make you listen!”

“You’re bloody following me. Should have known. Dee was here, wasn’t he? Is there a two-bit conjurer or visionary crazy or babbling philosopher the Emperor _hasn’t_ hired? You should have a chat with him yourself, pick up a little walking-around money. Turn a sort of metaphysical trick, if you like.”

“Leave John alone!”

“Are you still mewling about your mortal? He’s bringing it on himself!”

“He’s not _my_ mortal,” Aziraphale snapped. “Anyway, it’s _your_ mortal bringing it on him!”

“Kelley?” Crowley barked incredulously. “Definitely not mine. I mean, not mine personally…Now, as a representative of Hell, very possibly…Yes, that wife-swapping bit _was_ over the top, wasn’t it? Not my idea, alas. That Madimi kid scares even me: _‘Thus it will be: the illegitimate will be joined with the true son. And the east will be united with the west, and the south with the north.’_ Ha, so swive each other’s wives. Bloody brilliant.”

“How on earth do you know about that? And what’s the _matter_ with you?” Aziraphale demanded.

“You’re too involved. You’re too attached. It won’t lead anywhere good,” Crowley shouted, eyes furious. “I don’t know what crap you’ve been whispering to him through those little glass balls of his, but…”

“You think I…” Aziraphale threw up his hands in disgust. “You think I let him _invoke_ me?”

“No, I actually don’t think that. Do you know why I don’t? Because _I’ve_ been there, Aziraphale. _I’ve_ talked to them. That whole line about angels in error and how they fall and that weird business about his kids? Mine! I made it up! I’ve even peered out through the other side of that thing and seen you there floating around behind them all invisible like some cheap _ghost._ His wards are _shit!”_

He saw Aziraphale’s hand rising of its own accord to slap him; he caught it by the wrist, and the angel looked utterly shocked, staring at his hand in Crowley’s grip as if he’d never seen it before.

“I want to know why you care so much,” Crowley said quietly.

“He’s one of _ours,_ Crowley. He’s a man of God.”

Crowley snorted. “Why do you say that? Because he’s so obsequious? I know I’ve spent more time on my knees before an angel than he has, and it doesn’t make _me_ holy.” He prepared to grab Aziraphale’s other wrist too, should it be necessary. But it wasn’t; the angel only heaved and seethed and flashed celestial wrath out of his eyes, and it was somehow both terrifyingly sexy and unbearably annoying.

“I want to know why you care so much,” Aziraphale demanded. “I want to know why you can’t stay out of my business. I want to know why you keep running off to the continent with your Nolan babbler and won’t give me a straight answer about anything.”

“Maybe you haven’t asked me the right questions. And leave Giordano out of it.”

“Leave John out of it then. What’s the right question, eh…Let me think.”

“And while you’re thinking…” Crowley let go of Aziraphale’s wrist and turned to walk away. Aziraphale rubbed the imprints of his fingers and thought for just a minute, until he lunged and tackled Crowley to the cobblestones again. For his trouble, he got whacked in the face with wings unfolding at full speed. Crowley wriggled out from under him and took off from a prone position—not an easy feat, but he was motivated.

“You bloody _coward!”_ Aziraphale shrieked, taking flight after him and barely dodging the narrow warren of roof cornices and gables. Prague had not been built with air traffic in mind. “This is so _uncivilised.”_

“You’re the one who keeps hitting me!” came the shout back. But Crowley wasn’t trying for a repeat of the Jerusalem Incident. He was merely sulking on a rooftop, doing a very unconvincing imitation of a gargoyle. Aziraphale leaned his back against the other gargoyle facing him.

“Do you have any idea how hard this kind of thing is for a being like me to say?” Crowley sighed.

“No, because you haven’t said it yet and I don’t know what it is.”

“I…” Crowley shook his head, apparently feeling that particular “I” inadequate in some way, and tried again. “I…I…don’t want…tossssseeyougethurt.”

“Oh…” said Aziraphale softly, a little awed. And then he got angry again. “Well, I appreciate your concern, but honestly, when I made my mental lists of all the problems one might have to deal with on this plane, I have to say an overprotective demon never crossed my mind.”

“Don’t be such a prat about it.”

“I can handle myself.”

“Never said you couldn’t. Even the best—or worst--of us get in over our heads. And I don’t think you can count on them. Might turn on you when you need them most.”

Aziraphale looked up, watched Crowley’s eyes fix on a dancing flame in a beacon light across two roofs. There was a pale orange reflection on the demon’s hair and feathers. The sky behind him was clear and sharp like polished black glass.

And a revelation cleaved Aziraphale to the heart. It wasn’t a Revelation; it was the kind of revelation humans have—sharp and brief and confusing and agonising; the knees collapse a little and the heart stops for a pulsebeat because one’s brain has momentarily forgotten them.

“Crowley…did you…I thought I saw…it wasn’t the future, it was the past…and it _was_ real…I didn’t trust the vision…I wasn’t there, I’m sorry…”

“Don’t know what was worse – the humiliation of getting stuck there unable to get out, or the pain.”

Aziraphale hugged himself with one arm and reached out to Crowley with another.

“No, I know what was worse,” Crowley decided. “It was definitely the pain. It went on a really long time. It’s not as if I could have repented, not even faking it. The tongue just wouldn’t do that. That’s how they left me—just their little joke. None of the powers and all of the drawbacks. Just glad the fucking barbecue cook didn’t decide to anoint me.”

“Crowley, I’m so sorry…I can’t believe I wasn’t there for you, I…?”

“What could _you_ have done? Some kind of miracle?” Crowley burst out laughing. “And then they’d make me into a saint, wouldn’t that be delicious? Oh, they’d love it Upstairs. Funniest prank since Job. And Downstairs, they’d know there was an angel who’d risk himself for me. That would’ve been hilarious to them, too.”

Laughing at that was a little counter to Aziraphale’s instincts, but it burst out of him anyway. And since he was getting pretty tired of fighting his instincts all the time, he crept up upon Crowley and took the demon in his arms, laying his face on the thin shoulder, hands reaching behind him and stroking his beautiful wings, not entirely sure whom he was trying to reassure.

“Hanging around with the wrong people,” Crowley muttered, “That’s bad news. Don’t you go—“

“It’s served me well so far,” Aziraphale murmured, kissing Crowley’s ear. “Or do you not count?”

“I probably do count.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Aziraphale sighed into Crowley’s neck. The night of her coronation, when Crowley’d been so…oh. Of course. Aziraphale remembered what Crowley had done for him in Constantinople—reminding him a body wasn’t just a trap and the world had redeeming (pardon the expression) qualities, all but literally bringing him back to life by way of each sense, one by one.

If he showed pity, Crowley would shove him clear off the roof and into next Tuesday, and rightly so.

What Aziraphale showed him instead was passion, clenching his hand in the hair at the nape of Crowley’s neck and kissing the demon vehemently. Their teeth clicked together awkwardly and their heads turned strangely, but Aziraphale found a rhythm for his lips and slid the tip of his tongue in and out of Crowley’s mouth most suggestively. He was rewarded with a low groan, vibrating against the heel of his hand that rested along Crowley’s throat.

“Why can’t I get enough of you?” Crowley asked desperately, holding Aziraphale’s face away from his for a moment.

“Because there’s so much of me to get?” Aziraphale smiled.

“I don’t understand. You’re not my _type,”_ Crowley whined and pulled Aziraphale against him hard.

“I didn’t know you _had_ a –Oh!” That was Crowley’s fingers, dropping low to the backs of his thighs, firm and insistent and exploring.

“Mmm,” Crowley said, requesting more of that kiss.

“It’s me, too,” Aziraphale admitted sloppily, tongue awkwardly placed for talking. “I want you so much.”

“Me too. Yes. Want you, I mean, not me. Right here, right now.”

“Here?” Aziraphale gasped, though he shouldn’t’ve been surprised, they were halfway there already. “But it’s a church…doesn’t it bother you?”

“A little. Don’t care.”

“Well, then…” Aziraphale leaned into him, moved against him, slid his hand slowly down, underneath, and grasped…with a tease, drawing back, releasing and then returning…He knew he may never be as gifted as Crowley with his mouth but he thought he was getting rather good with his hands, and this was confirmed by Crowley’s little hitching moan, his knees buckling--and then they were both down on the roof, reeling in wings just in time.

Crowley winced at the full-body touch of the building. “Actually, it’s…”

“Fine, you’re on top then,” said Aziraphale, adjusting them and shimmying under Crowley, who clasped his shoulder with one hand and ripped his tunic open with the other.

“Much better…OH! So good…”

“Yes…Oh. _Oh,_ like that, my lo--mmmmph!” His mouth was suddenly full of tongue, not his own, and his hand was full of Crowley’s velvet shaft, begging, and his own was full of heat and ache safe and tight in Crowley’s skillfully working hand, hips fitting together and thighs entangled, and then they were riding each other somewhere free and wild. The sky above them was full of stars.

He’d wanted to ask why they kept doing this. It was the stupidest question in the cosmos.

Crowley found that he did have mild church burns on his hands and knees in the morning, but it had certainly been worth it.

Far, far away over the sea a wind arose and the Spanish Armada foundered in a storm, sparing England. More than sparing her, in fact. Making her the greatest naval power in the Western world by default, much as Dee had once predicted.

“Come back with me to England,” Aziraphale whispered. “The Continent doesn’t need you.” _I do._

~~~~~~~~~~~~~


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which mortals do what mortals do and lovers do what lovers do; Azrael finds other beings always underfoot, and Crowley and Aziraphale receive unexpected messages--they've been noticed and (redundantly) immortalised.

  
**London, 1589**

Had Crowley not been in an uncharacteristically literary mood due to a most enticing run-in with a certain spy with a penchant for playwriting (and, in Crowley’s opinion, a misreading of the Faustus incident that was just wrong enough to make for a play that could keep all the little Inquisitors uneasy in their beds for years), he wouldn’t have been near the booksellers’ row at all (or so he told himself) and would have missed the following fascinating and disturbing scene:

“Where did you come by these? Tell me, or you’ll have even more curses on your head than you already do, and that is saying something.”

One man held another up against a wall in the classic fashion of imminent beatdowns the whole world over and throughout time. One of them was not exactly a man at all.

“From Saunder…he got them from a dealer in Rotterdam, he says, all fairly done and…”

“That’s a bloody lie.”

Pages littered the cobblestones all around where the two snarled at each other, and Crowley knew the younger-looking of the two booksellers was lying, all right. The bits and scraps of tomes on astronomy, on demonology, on horticulture, on seafaring, on the early church and on the birds of Armenia, all had margin notes in a familiar hand. Crowley ground his teeth. All right, so he’d messed around with Dee a fair amount himself. Messing with the man’s _library,_ though, while he was out of the country, as his former friends and neighbours had done…that had been the lowest of the low. Maybe Aziraphale had at last got him trained somehow, but Crowley now thought there were always new definitions of the depths to which only humans, not demons, could sink.

“You’re just jealous you didn’t get to the old charlatan’s stash first,” the dealer smirked. “Know you’d love to buy yourself some new clothes.”

“You’re a disgrace to our profession. Get out of My Sight,” said Aziraphale in a terrifying voice, and Crowley wondered if the human had heard the capital letters as clearly as he did.

Then Aziraphale punched the man in the mouth--hard. Leaving him lying there, he stormed away down the alley, and walked straight into Crowley, who took his arm without a word.

Two blocks later, Crowley said quietly, “If you want, I’ll take the credit for that. So you don’t get the blame.”

Aziraphale was still trembling with rage. “I shouldn’t have snapped like that. It’s hardly a shock – I’ve been finding John’s things in the stalls for months now. I get them back when I can.”

“Well, if it’s any consolation I can see right through that one,” Crowley said. “He’s been ours a while. Your curse was just the cherry on top, and he deserved a good beating too.”

“Is it wrong of me to be glad of that?”

“Since when am I a good judge of that sort of thing?”

  
**London, 1592**

Crowley was footsore and furious when he returned from the Continent, his resolve to swear off the obligatory black horses made final one last time as a pair of them had insisted on pitching his carriage into an especially unpleasantly-textured river somewhere cold outside of Vienna.

For once, the dingy little bookshop was all but warm by comparison. Aziraphale’s eyes were flinty and angry, though, as he clutched a pamphlet with no trace of his usual reverence for the printed word.

“Which friend of yours is getting denounced this time?” Crowley asked wryly.

“Raleigh, nominally,” Aziraphale grumbled. “School of Night, my arse.”

“Language, angel!” Crowley laughed. “I suppose he wanted to seem mysterious. That’ll come back to bite him. And…?”

“Goes without saying, doesn’t it? Rumour has it Kelley’s dead, you know.”

“Ha! They wish. Fallen to his death from a window in Prague, is that the latest story? You know what they say when there’s no body.”

“You look like you’ve been on a bad job yourself.”

Crowley sat down heavily on a rickety chair that dared not tilt further and rested his chin on his hands. “The Continent is a bad job right now…I don’t know if Dee was smarter or just luckier but Bruno’s gullible in the _worst_ ways, and I can’t follow where he’s gone. Churchmen and scoundrels…buying themselves indulgences by selling friends out to Hell. He’ll have to trust to fortune now, and his own silver tongue, I can’t…”

Aziraphale just peered at him steadily, tiny quirk of a dark smile. “If I wanted to be a bastard,” he said, “I could ask why you care so much.”

“Funny how that happens, isn’t it?” Crowley said. A glass of wine appeared by his right hand, and he drank it unquestioningly, sighing and unpinning his cloak. Aziraphale locked the door.

“I’m glad you’re here,” Aziraphale said. “I’ve had a rough week too. Why don’t we take it out on each other?”

“Like in the bad old days?” Crowley grinned.

“Not quite,” said Aziraphale slyly, sinking to his knees before Crowley’s chair, caressing the soft leather of the demon’s high boots, vanishing every bit of clothing that got in his way. Crowley tightened his hand in silken hair, let his head fall back in the rush of sudden pleasure and imagined for a second he could see the stars through the waterstained wood of the bookshop ceiling as he felt himself hardening quickly to fill Aziraphale’s insistent mouth.

***

Some miles away in Mortlake, John Dee stood alone, surveying the repair work in the library of his cottage and tried not to think of everything—and everyone--gone missing, books and children and friends and possibilities and irrevocably lost years. Almost idly, rather absently, he rolled a crystal ball in his aging hands, imparting to it some warmth as he looked out the window at the stars.

He could barely believe it when the heat of his hands turned to mist within the stone, and he himself, without a medium, for the first time, began to see.

“Did you think I had led you astray?” asked Madimi.

“To be honest, yes,” said John.

“You took my leap of faith, did you not?”

“I did,” he said.

“Before long,” Madimi said. “I shall tell you stories. I shall draw aside many veils.”

Amazed, John sat down in Kelley’s old chair a bit creakily, staring past the mist into the images unfurling against a field of green and flowers.

  
**London, 1598**

It was a calm afternoon in the bookshop, and Aziraphale was enjoying it so much that it was inevitable something would ruin it—and probably even inevitable that it would have been Crowley. But when he saw how unhappy the demon looked, standing there with a letter in his hand, he couldn’t bring himself to grouse about it.

“Bruno’s trial has started,” Crowley said, leaden and hopeless.

“Oh no,” Aziraphale sighed. “Or maybe that’s good, right? He’s been in prison so long.”

“I’m going to go back.”

Aziraphale dropped the tome in his hands. “What? Why?”

“Sick of running from things. Going to make one last try.”

“One last try for _what?!”_

“Seeing if he’ll let me…”

Aziraphale reached out, tried to take Crowley’s hands in his, but his associate was having none of it. “You’ve tried before.”

“Twice, maybe third time’s the charm.”

“He won’t recant, and he won’t take the chance to escape. Sounds like an almost-willing sacrifice to me.”

Crowley’s eyes flashed dangerously. “It’s all about the victory for _your_ side, isn’t it? Fucking Army of Heaven always up my arse. Don’t you get it? The Inquisition is _ours!_ We didn’t come up with it, _they_ did, and it’s still the best machine for dragging ‘em down since the bloody Crusades!”

“All the more reason for you to stay out of it, then!” Aziraphale cried.

“You’d’ve done it for me, you said!”

“Yes,” said Aziraphale, very quietly. “I would have. And I wish I had.”

“I don’t,” Crowley snapped. “I learned something from that. You can’t Fall _twice,_ so all the things I wish I didn’t know get put somewhere else. Makes me want to _use_ them somehow.”

“You’re going to go no matter what I say.”

“You got it, angel. Very swift of you.”

“I’m coming with you.”

“Oh Kent, no.”

“You can’t shake me.”

“You can’t thwart me.”

“I can, but I won’t. Unless I have to.”

They stood there staring at each other in a perfectly frozen impasse until a book hit the floor elsewhere in the shop and they both hit the ceiling, quite literally.

“Oh…I’m so sorry to disturb you…”

“Gyah!” Aziraphale cried, steadying his hands.

Curse Will and his bloody historical research. The playwright moved on cat feet, melded into the shelves, and made it all too easy to forget he was there. He was trying not to look as stunned or puzzled as he must have been. Crowley, unhelpfully, hissed at him.

  
**Rome, February 1600**

There was a crowd in Campo de’Fiori; there was almost one above it too.

The smell was all too familiar, but the proud angle of the heretic’s chin was something relatively rare. He’d been gagged, but no one expected a recant anyway. There wouldn’t be any mercy either.

Two beings sat on a nearby roof, trembling. The fair one held the dark one’s arm—perhaps as much to restrain him as to comfort him.

But it wouldn’t have mattered. The time for heroics was past, and the angel, the demon had to admit, might be right. Certainly the man himself had thought so.

Crowley was still shaking, though. “You have no idea how much it hurts…I hope to everything I can think of you never do.”

“My dear, we don’t have to _watch,”_ Aziraphale pleaded.

“Yes, we do. Getting a weak stomach?”

“Please. Jerusalem.”

“Sorry.”

Crowley was biting his nails until Aziraphale lightly touched his hand. “You told me what he said: ‘Perhaps you, my judges, pronounce this sentence against me with greater fear than I receive it.’”

“Yeah,” smiled the demon weakly. “Good one, eh?”

“Yes, very good,” said the angel sincerely. “Worthy of – well, never mind. Did you think maybe you’re feeling more fear than he is?”

“It’s certainly possible.”

The flames were rising. It had to be fucking awful in there. All the wise words in the cosmos weren’t going to get you out of…

“Take my hand,” said Aziraphale. “We can do something.”

Crowley did so and closed his eyes and gasped when he realised what Aziraphale meant, and they did it together. It didn’t take long. It was easy. The involuntary screams stopped.

There was a third pair of wings.

RATHER OVERSTEPPED YOUR BOUNDS THERE, DIDN’T YOU?

“The quality of mercy,” said Aziraphale in his best Heavenly tone, “is not strained.”

OH WELL. LESS WORK FOR ME. I DIDN’T SEE A THING.

“Thanks,” said Crowley.

“No, thank you,” said Giordano, taking hold of Azrael’s cloak as they faded. He winked at Crowley and nodded at Aziraphale and didn’t seem surprised to see either of them through the true sight of the dead.

It may have been emotion, it may have been weariness, or a certain defiance of defiance, but Crowley rather compliantly let himself be comforted, sinking his face into Aziraphale’s shoulder and slumping down into his arms. They clustered together for long—very long—moments in stillness and silence, just the tiny sound of Aziraphale’s palm against Crowley’s hair.

Crowley sighed and tugged a little at the angel, wrapping his hands in the soft cloak, and then something rolled out of Aziraphale’s pocket and bumped up against the parapet.

It was a small crystal ball, about the size of the palm of his hand, and as Aziraphale reached to reclaim it, it shimmered. Aziraphale blinked. It was John’s – it had never shown anything to him before, and judging by Crowley’s boggled expression, he was seeing something too. But he recognised the smiling, pretty, slightly mad face in the glass--although it was a different face, it was somehow the same.

“Am I not a fine little maiden?” asked Madimi, again.

“I don’t think you’re a maiden at all,” said Crowley. “You look like a boy to me.”

“Sometimes I’m not sure myself,” Madimi shrugged, the golden-haired child with the crystal ball in her or his own hand that also had a crystal ball with a child in it, on and on until infinity, wherever that was. “Not as if it matters.”

“What did you mean by--?” Aziraphale asked hoarsely, “You know, to John, when you…”

“Oh, I don’t explain,” said Madimi. “I just am. It’s the best I can do. And I should go, for that matter. But I know you two. We _will_ meet again…do keep it up!”

The crystal was just an inert object once more, and Crowley and Aziraphale looked at each other so helplessly the glance was an implicit agreement to never speak of it again.

“How do you feel?” Aziraphale finally asked, holding Crowley’s hand and stroking it gently.

“Better than I thought I would, actually.”

Aziraphale smiled. “Let me inspire you to some wine.”

  
**London, 1601**

It was a reversal of their usual places, that was for sure.

Morning started to fill up the little room over the bookshop with its audaciously yellow light, and it had no effect whatsoever on a very soundly sleeping angel. It was unwelcome, though, to a demon who was feeling very awake and a bit agitated, and would have got up and indulged in some quality pacing time were he not ensnared and weighted down by said angel. So he had to do his restless thinking in one place, and that was never good.

Aziraphale rarely slept this long, or slept at all. He’d told Crowley once he thought he’d done it for a week after the Crucifixion and for a day or two during the Black Death, but wasn’t sure. Oh yes, and after Jerusalem. Most vexing, those Crusades.

Indeed. It had been three days that the exhausted and restored angel slept. Crowley had let Aziraphale go on thinking it had been only one for five hundred years.

And the other circumstance was—well, that counted then too—was that he did sometimes drop off like a stone right after he and Crowley had…mm, yes. Usually just for a few hours, though, and Crowley was rarely in much of a state himself to fully appreciate the limp, sweaty, smiling mass the angel turned into, being much more of a well-studied sleeper himself and having much more of a natural talent for it.

Crowley was far more used to scheming to get under Aziraphale than to get _out_ from under him, but one solution came to his mind immediately. He closed his eyes, changed form, and then slithered through the sheets--moving a little more slowly over the hill of a hip than was strictly necessary--and didn’t resume his favourite shape again until he’d coiled up into his discarded cloak on the floor. Was this room ever warm, in any season?

Aziraphale made a little protesting sound at Crowley’s escape, but didn’t wake.

Crowley stopped staring at him with a heroic effort. How had their Arrangement, on its face at first a mere sort of non-aggression pact, turned into this messy thing that turned the mere thought of parting into sorrow that, no, actually, was not the least bit sweet? Why had he hopes and dreams that hadn’t occurred to him for millennia blossoming all over the place now, mostly about getting his hands all over that fusty, dumpy angel—touching him, tasting him, getting him to feel…Well, he knew, really. He’d figured it out sometime long ago. Maybe in Samarkand, the night Tamür died. It was that when he did those terribly, deliciously human things with Aziraphale, it wasn’t _just_ his human body that felt everything, and he was fairly sure the angel’s pleasure was the same. Once he knew that, he couldn’t un-know it.

They couldn’t go on like this, acting as if this world were going to last forever and they were always going to be able to carry on chasing each other all over it, arguing and gossiping and negotiating and drinking wine and eating and shagging like bloody humans, as if that were anything so great to aspire to. There was an Above and a Below, the Sephiroth and the Qlippoth, and never the two should meet except in the great Confrontation. Weren’t even the stars fixed in their dome? Well, Bruno hadn’t thought so, and he’d certainly thought it was important enough to go down for in the worst way...

The pounding he was hearing wasn’t all in his head as he’d thought. There was someone at the door downstairs.

With a frustrated hiss—he’d been on the verge of thinking something important, he thought—he blinked himself back into his clothes (and mending their rips; Aziraphale could be overzealous) and stalked into the shop.

The courier was little more than an urchin, but he smiled at Crowley’s scowl as he held up a letter. “Are you the bookseller?”

“No, but I’ll take it to him.”

The boy looked uncomfortable. “Well, Mr. Shakespeare told me to give it directly to…”

“Oh, him, eh? Listen, he’s right upstairs, and I’ll tell you this, you do not want to wake him. Trussst me.”

And the boy did, and handed him the letter with a shaking hand. Crowley had a way of making himself seem both very trustworthy and quite frightening at once.

Crowley had never respected Aziraphale’s privacy before and wasn’t about to start now. He was still reading as he climbed back up the rickety stairs and into the little bedchamber, where Aziraphale was staring at him in disbelief.

“Are you reading my letters now?”

“Yes, of course. It’s from that Will. He’s sent you a _poem.”_

“Give it to me!” Aziraphale ordered testily, reaching for the paper, sheets falling away most fetchingly from his bare chest.

“That’s not the way you said that last night,” Crowley smirked, holding it away. “Listen to this: ‘As you have been so kind as to give me constructive criticism in the past, perhaps you would appreciate this small gesture of thanks.’ Well, I could’ve given him some criticism too…”

“There’s a reason he asked me and not you,” Aziraphale said.

Crowley snickered. “I’m sure there are many. Don’t panic, I don’t think it’s a love poem. Not to you anyway. Oh, here we go: ‘This is my humble attempt to directly address themes of matters much of interest in philosophy…’ I think I smell a didactic alchemical metaphor coming on. It smells just like that time Dee got his beard caught in the burner.”

“You were there?”

“Yes, I told you his wards were shit, didn’t I?”

“I still can’t believe you did that. All in some misguided attempt to protect me?”

“Well, that and I wanted to see what he was really up to. And to know if you were fucking him.”

“Crowley!”

“You threatened to do something like that, remember? He even _was_ the next poor sod who walked into your shop. Not that it would have bothered me if you did.”

Aziraphale looked at him very askance. “I think you’re lying about that.”

“Nope. It’s just that if you were, I wanted to watch.”

“Give me that letter!”

“Oh no. Let me read this to you. I thought you went for this kind of thing. Hmm, it’s about birds. Having a funeral…thingy. ‘Let the priest in surplice white, That defunctive music can, Be the death-divining swan, Lest the requiem lack his right.’ Has Will ever _heard_ a dying swan? ‘And thou, treble-dated crow, That they sable-gender mak’st / With the breath thou giv’st and tak’st, ‘Mongst our mourners shalt thou go.’ I thought it was cats that stole breath, not crows.”

This conundrum puzzled Crowley long enough for Aziraphale to snatch the letter.

Crowley sulked as Aziraphale read. It did sound better in the angel’s voice.

_“Here the anthem doth commence; Love and constancy is dead; Phoenix and the turtle fled / In a mutual flame from hence.”_

“Wait, what do turtles have to do with it?”

“Turtle _dove,_ Crowley, it’s symbolism.”

“Right, symbolism’s always the excuse. But they’re different, y’know, species.”

“I think that’s kind of the point. _'So they lov’d, as in love in twain / Had the essence, but in one; Two distincts, division none: Number there in love was slain.'"_

“Wouldn’t that be kind of like bestiality in a way?”

“No, they’re both birds.”

“Well, people and sheep are both mammals.”

“You’re missing the point by a mile. _‘Hearts remote, yet not asunder; Distance, and no space was seen / ‘Twixt the turtle and his queen; But in them it were a wonder.'”_

“One’s always got to be the girl, right?”

Aziraphale just smirked. “Poetic convention, my dear. Really, this is very nicely done: _‘So between them love did shine, That the turtle saw his right / Flaming in the phoenix’ sight / Either was the other’s mine.’"_

Crowley shuffled around and read over Aziraphale’s shoulder. “’Property was thus appalled / That the self was not the same; Single nature’s double name / Neither two nor one was call’d.’ You’ve got to admit, that’s a bit tortured.”

“True, and the next stanza’s worse. Over all, though…._’To the phoenix and the dove / Co-supremes and stars of love’_—that’s marvellous.”

“Depressing, isn’t it? ‘Death is now the phoenix’s nest; And the turtle’s loyal breast / To eternity doth rest.’”

“Well, Will does like his tragedies,” Aziraphale sighed.

“Yes, and the audience cries and cries and goes home and shrieks at their kids and kicks their dogs same as always. Oh, this is a doozy: ‘Leaving no posterity / ‘Twas not their infirmity, It was married chastity.’”

“The one virtue I would never accuse you of. _‘Truth may seem, but cannot be; Beauty brag, but ‘tis not she; Truth and beauty buried be.’_ Well, Truth and Beauty can’t die, so it has to really mean something else.”

“Are you so sure they can’t?” Crowley asked.

“Not forever, no,” Aziraphale said firmly. “But it is an alchemical metaphor, though, you were right, the red and the white…”

Crowley thought that he had been about to think something important before the messenger showed up, and he tried for it again, but it was dancing just beyond his reach. Well, might as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb. There were, he suspected, certain words of renunciation he might be utterly incapable of speaking even in full possession of his occult faculties.

Aziraphale’s brow was slightly furrowed as though he were still trying to figure it out.

Crowley took the poem out of his hand and set it down on the night-table.

“You know,” Aziraphale said, “Will seems a bit of a medium himself. I wonder how much of what he writes he really understands.”

“Well, I hope _someone_ understands it,” Crowley said.

“Hm” said Aziraphale, and the silence between them was almost—almost—uncomfortable. “I suppose I should open the shop soon.”

“Later,” said Crowley with a sly grin, “Let’s have some more of that ‘married chastity.’”

“You’re insatiable,” Aziraphale whispered as Crowley pushed him slowly down on the bed; he did not look at all displeased about it.

_Mine,_ Crowley thought, unbidden and unbanishable, as he licked his way down Aziraphale like a stag at a salt vein. Throat with its racing pulse; collarbone rising up against him; right nipple, rosy-tan and vulnerable, making Aziraphale sob with lust as he sucked it hard and bit a little.

Aziraphale started to try to speak, his hands rising and spreading up Crowley’s shoulders.

Crowley looked down at him, rubbing the rough embroidery of his clothes against Aziraphale’s bare skin before divesting himself entirely. He’d never wanted so much to just shove himself into the angel’s mouth to shut him up in case he said something fearful, but those darkened, pleading eyes gave him different thoughts—tender ones he also couldn’t banish. His hand slid down Aziraphale’s belly, slightly round, warm; his fingers started teasing the underside of Aziraphale’s very hard cock in a way that made the angel writhe and swear--that always made Crowley just want to play with it ruthlessly until Aziraphale cried out and attacked him. He paused for one smug smile before dipping down and taking the tip in his mouth, and got the reaction he wanted, with vibrations he could feel against his tongue and in his throat and down into his chest where his deepest desires held their throne.

“You—_you_—oh, that’s--!”

_Oh yes indeed,_ thought Crowley and only murmured, “Mm-hmm” as he moved, making it as slick and wet as he possibly could.

He did it to watch the look on Aziraphale’s face shift and change when Crowley suddenly sat up and straddled him, sinking down slowly and taking him inside. Aziraphale grasped his hips and thrust upwards hard, and Crowley cried out with joy to see that wild little snarl on the angel’s lips, the mad hunger in his eyes.

“Did I hurt you?” Aziraphale whispered.

“No,” Crowley breathed back, leaning forward, starting to ride him with a delirious deliberateness, doing something really weird with his spine, “but…you know…sometimes…I want you to.”

“I know…I…” Aziraphale couldn’t finish what he was going to say, he just tightened his grip on Crowley’s hips, placing him right where he wanted him, moving in just the way that hit Crowley inside right there, _oh fuck yes…_

  
Crowley made sounds that could not possibly be misinterpreted—by anyone who happened to be near the building, not just Aziraphale—shot through as they were with the occasional actual word, all of them being crass and lush vulgarities in praise of angelic anatomy and the specific sensations it was causing in his own, none of said words having more than two syllables. Aziraphale writhed and thrashed and shuddered under him, fighting to lead the dance despite his disadvantage, changing it all at last when a hand of his closed around Crowley’s needy erection, moving up and down, and he whispered, “Come for me…_all over me.”_

Crowley had never obeyed an angel with less resistance in his existence; he’d wanted to last longer but oh, _Aziraphale_ back arched off the bed in complete abandon, damp-haired and lusty, forcing it out of him… clearly Crowley’s shivering, his high-pitched gasp, and that sudden hot mess struck a deep and thick angel nerve as taut as a viol’s string, because through his helpless falling spasms he felt Aziraphale bucking up beneath him as he panted helplessly, flooding him inside, praying in some way Crowley didn’t find offensive in the least.

“Oh, Crowley, you’re…” Aziraphale rasped, pulling him down into his arms. Sticky. Heady lingering scent of sex, rich and magical. The demon traced a pattern with his finger in the puddle on Aziraphale’s chest before breathing it away. Aziraphale nuzzled his ear.

“Spent,” Crowley murmured against his shoulder. “Consumed.”

“We’ll have to find ourselves a better metaphor for it, dear boy,” Aziraphale said, his breath returning, pulse slowing. “I know you’re tired of that one.”

But he didn’t get a response – their places had reverted back to their natural order, and Crowley was quite thoroughly asleep, his weight and his limbs entangling Aziraphale firmly in place. Realising this situation wasn’t going to change anytime soon, Aziraphale acquiesced to it, slowly caressing the lean arm flung across his chest and trying not to think of this complex, problematic sweetness as something he could have lost.

  
**Mortlake, 1609**

It was hardly standard operating procedure, Aziraphale thought as he held the frail hand in his own. But it felt proper to do, somehow. The man had outlived his wives and most of his children and the Queen he served to the end, and now he looked completely towards the eternal.

“I was such a fool,” John whispered.

“You lost everything,” Aziraphale said. “As far as I’m concerned you did wonderfully, considering. I don’t know how you stand it.”

“Oh no. Not _everything,”_ said the old mystic. Weakly he beckoned Aziraphale to lean close. Then he rasped, mischievously, “You’re not the Angel of Death, are you?”

“No,” Aziraphale said, relieved. “I’m afraid he’s on his way though.” He could feel the shiver as the curtains of air parted to admit the chill of Azrael’s wake.

“Right,” John said. “Not your detail. You watch over the fates of this world.”

Aziraphale blinked.

“A Principality, right?”

Dumbstruck, Aziraphale nodded before he caught himself.

“Then I know I leave my world in good hands,” John smiled. “You and your demon leman.”

Aziraphale tried to bite down his shock, but he squeezed John’s hand a little too hard.

“Fear not. I don’t. I was tested. It _is_ all one,” said the dying man, his eyes going misty. “I see the pillars now. Mercy and Severity, and between them, a great light…”

The whirr of wings in the room felt like more than one pair; the newest arrival’s wingbeats were as silent as an owl’s and as shot through with twilight.

FANCY MEETING YOU HERE.

“Sshh,” Aziraphale whispered peevishly.

NO RUSH.

“I think I’m ready for you,” John said in a clear, strong voice. He was looking straight at Azrael, and Aziraphale realised he had not even noticed the particular moment, but the doves at the window had, and they ruffled their wings.

THAT’S VERY REFRESHING. I APPRECIATE IT.

As they faded away, John was beginning to talk Azrael’s ears off (or would have, if he had them) about the weight of the soul.

There was someone waiting for Aziraphale too, just outside the gate.

“I’m sorry,” Crowley said quietly.

“I’m not, particularly,” Aziraphale said. “I’ll miss him, but it was a good death.”

“So I take it he’s not going…downstairs.”

“I most seriously doubt it.”

Crowley shrugged resignedly. “That was pretty half-arsed on my part. Now, if I’d really been trying…”

“You wouldn’t be the Crowley I know. He’s frightfully lazy, that one.”

“Except in bed,” Crowley whispered and planted his hand at the small of the angel’s back as they walked down the lane.

“Do you think of nothing else?”

“Lots of things, when you’re not around. I thought you were going to scold me for being disrespectful to the dead or something.’

“No, not this one,” Aziraphale cast a strange little glance at his opposite number. “He knew, you know.”

Crowley blinked. “He knew…how much?”

“Entirely too much. It’s not in his diaries, though. He stopped writing them years ago.”

Crowley shuddered. “That’s spooky. And not in the way I like.”

Aziraphale took his hand. He’d been about to say something about ineffability, but thought better of it. But Crowley just shook his head and said “Now is a veil drawn before all, and all things appear beautifuller than they ever did.”

“I remember that,” Aziraphale said. “Probably one of the very statements that first convinced him. Kelley wouldn’t’ve thought of that on his own.”

“Surprised Uriel didn’t take red ink to it, as ‘beautifuller’ is hardly a word.”

There were plenty of ways to get back to London, but they opted to walk. The chill of the March air was mitigated by a little spring and slight scent of flowers, rising out of the ground at the graves of John’s wife and children (for Pestilence too had weighed in) as they passed by in quiet.

They paused in a little oak grove. Last year’s Maypole stood leaning and fading, its ragged ribbons grey with winter and waiting for their renewal. They had a quick picnic lunch of bread and cheese and wine—and a lingering dessert of each other—before continuing on. Crowley had matters to attend to in the New World; Aziraphale had to see a royal typesetter about a Bible. Pleasure had to yield to business sometimes; after all, that wheel would surely turn again.

  
Far away, Will was writing a play about plots within plots, a kind but cunning wizard, a fey spirit, a ship, and a storm.

  
**~fin~**

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [The Phoenix and the Turtle (A Metaphysical Romance) [Podfic]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3187718) by [Sex_in_spats](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sex_in_spats/pseuds/Sex_in_spats)
  * A [Restricted Work] by [Macdicilla](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Macdicilla/pseuds/Macdicilla) Log in to view. 




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